We didn’t just show up in America with broken spirits and empty hands. We came from kings, queens, builders, warriors, and thinkers. We came from people who looked at the stars and understood the rhythm of the earth. But over time, what we brought has been hijacked, twisted, and sold back to us in a package designed to keep us lost. This isn’t by accident. This is war, plain and simple. And it ain’t fought with bullets—it’s fought with culture, with food, with education, with religion, with music. It’s silent, but it’s deadly.
Look around. Everything that once uplifted us is now used to hold us down. Our music, once a tool of resistance and storytelling, has been turned into a weapon of self-destruction. Hip hop wasn’t always about killing, sex, and materialism. It used to be about truth, community, and pride. But the industry flipped it. They made it toxic on purpose. Why? Because our words carry power. And when those words stop building and start tearing down, we do the work for them. We turn on each other. We forget our roots. We stop loving ourselves.
And the damage doesn’t stop there. The food they push in our neighborhoods is poison. Not just physically, but spiritually. Our corner stores are loaded with sugar, grease, chemicals, and processed death. It’s cheap, addictive, and destructive. Meanwhile, just a few miles away, other communities are feeding their families food that heals, food that fuels the mind. But they say we’re lazy, undisciplined, uneducated. No, we’ve been targeted. There’s a reason soul food was once healthy in Africa but became toxic in America. They stripped it down, just like they stripped us down.
Religion, too, was turned into a cage. Not all faiths, but the way it was handed to us. They took something spiritual and used it to make us obedient. Be quiet. Be humble. Wait for the next life. Don’t question the pastor. Don’t challenge the system. And we followed it because we needed hope—but hope without power is nothing but a chain. Real faith should give you strength. Real belief should make you rise. But we were taught to kneel and never stand.
Our schools? They don’t teach us about ourselves. They don’t show us our victories, our inventions, our revolutions. Instead, they cherry-pick history to make us feel like we’ve always been behind. Like we never built anything. Like our only value is entertainment or sports. And when a bright mind rises, when a young scholar shows promise, they get pulled out. They get offered jobs and money far away from the community. And we’re left without builders, without teachers, without guides.
This is no coincidence. This is a system running exactly how it was designed to run. And the most painful part is watching our people not see it. Watching us chase the illusions. Watching us argue over crumbs while others eat the whole cake. The world looks to us for culture, style, rhythm, power—and what they see now is confusion, conflict, and chaos. But they still feel our spirit. That’s why we’re still watched, still copied, still studied. We are the blueprint. But even a blueprint can be buried under rubble.
We need to wake up. Not in slogans or hashtags, but in real, everyday awareness. We need to take back what was stolen—our minds, our children, our future. That starts with knowing what’s been done to us and refusing to let it continue. We can’t depend on systems that were never built for us. We can’t keep handing over our power, our stories, our talents. If we don’t own our culture, someone else will—and they’ll sell it back to us with poison in the package.
It’s time to stop reminiscing and start rebuilding. Not in fantasy, but in focus. Our music can heal again. Our food can nourish. Our schools can inspire. Our leaders can rise from our own blocks, not the boardrooms of corporations. But we have to want it more than we want the distraction. We have to want it more than we want to fit in. Because fitting in means falling apart.
They know we’re powerful. That’s why they try so hard to destroy what we are. But if we remember who we’ve been—who we really are—they can’t stop what’s coming. The future belongs to those who build it. Let’s get back to building. Not alone, but together. In mind, in spirit, in truth.
We’ve been too quiet for too long. It’s time to speak again. Not with noise, but with clarity. Not with anger, but with purpose. We’ve got the fire. We’ve got the history. Now let’s get the future. Raw. Real. Unfiltered.
We don’t need their permission to be great.
We just need to remember. And act.
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